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Born in 1948 in Frankfurt, Hans-Joachim Klein was one of the only real working-class members of the Revolutionary Cells. A car mechanic and ex-juvenile delinquent, he joined the armed struggle in 1974. During the hostage taking at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Klein (alias “Angie”) tried to limit the violence, but he himself sustained a serious bullet wound.

He renounced armed struggle in May 1976, just as Carlos, thrown out of the PFLP, was looking to set up his own terrorist network. Klein hid north of Milan, from where, in April 1977, he mailed his gun and a letter to the magazine “Der Spiegel”. In the letter, he warned of two planned killings to support his rupture with “terror as a political weapon”. Klein spoke out on 7 August and 5 October 1978, in interviews with “Der Spiegel” and “Libération” respectively. In 1979, he published a book, “Rückkehr in die Menschlichkeit. Appell eines ausgestiegenen Terroristen”, which appeared a year later in France under the title “La Mort Mercenaire” (Mercenary Death). Arrested in Normandy in 1998, he was tried in Germany in 2001. He was sentenced to nine years’ in prison for his part in the Vienna raid, but was pardoned after five years of incarceration, in 2003. He has since lived in France.